ABSTRACT

The plan of this study was conceived during the last year of the Weimar Republic, and it was during this period that the research data were collected. 1 The study itself was written “in exile” after Hitler had come to power. I make these remarks advisedly in order to warn the reader that the motivation for this piece of work was not so much scholarly interest per se but a political or, if you will, moral concern. Working as a sociologist in a German academic context, I became appalled at the increasing political and moral apathy of Germany’s lower middle and middle classes beginning in the twenties—an apathy, if not callousness, which was hidden under the veneer of “cultural” pretensions. I was curious to find out whether a method of scientific access could be developed with which to study this constellation of political and moral decay and cultural magniloquence.